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Curation · Featured
Curator's note: spring selections and why we turned down 80 submissions

Maarten walks through the spring acquisition round — what we looked for, what disappointed us, and a Romanian film that stopped everything else we were watching. We turned down 80 submissions this round. Here's why.

April 18, 2026
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8 min read
Community
Film Circles: one year in, and what we've learned about online film discussion

We launched Film Circles in March 2025 with some trepidation. A year on, we have 340 active groups and a clearer sense of what makes these discussions work — and what kills them.

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New additions
April arrivals: 34 new titles including three Norwegian films and a complete Chantal Akerman retrospective

A strong month for Scandinavian drama, a landmark Belgian acquisition, and a small correction to our German New Wave coverage that some members will have been waiting for.

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Manifesto
Why we will never have a recommendation algorithm

A longer piece on why we believe algorithmic discovery is antithetical to how great films are found, and what we offer instead. This is the essay we keep linking to from our FAQ.

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Essay
The economics of small cinema: how European art house films get made and why most of them disappear

A conversation with three producers from the Netherlands, Austria, and Poland about the brutal economics of making non-commercial films in 2025, and why streaming hasn't saved them.

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Festival
IDFA 2024: what we watched, what we acquired, what got away

Our curators spent four days at the International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam. Here's the full account of what we saw, what we licensed, and the two films we lost to a competitor at the last minute.

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